Friday, July 26, 2013

You're Making Us Look Bad

This is another reddit inspired post. The post that got me thinking about this is Rage of a NewBro. You can go ahead and read the post, and the comments too, but this is a VERY long story, as in a page of small reddit font. The tl;dr is the NewBro was accused by a corporate bigwig of making the corporation look bad because he lost a 200 mISK ship and that lowered the alliance killboard stats.

You know, I've heard this all before. I've heard it from by buddy in Fatal Ascension who was "counseled" about his contributions to the killboard. We heard it from Rixx Javix not long ago when he was kicked from Tuskers for supposedly not living up to their ideals. This new bro who was in Nexus Fleet. I've even heard this sort of put down much, much closer to home.
And you know what? It's all bullshit.

To everyone who has ever said something like this to another player, especially a new bro or a carebear, you're the one who's making it look bad. If the killboard looks bad to your eyes, it's because you have failed to destroy enough ships to make up for us who are not so PvP l33t as you are.

Rather than run someone down for not living up to your assumptions about what winning Eve Online looks like, why don't you get off your lazy ass and make up for it? Go out and destroy more ships. Get your l33t PvP buds into their pro-fit l33t PvP ships and go blow someone up. What's that? You don't have any ISK? You're fresh out of l33t PvP ships? Stop making me look bad! Any moron can make ISK in this game. It's really easy.

That last bit was just trolling. I didn't really mean it, even if it is true. We all choose to "win" Eve Online our own way. To some, that's how many solo combats they win. For others, it's how much bling they can put on their pimped out Incursion Nightmare. For other's it's how much ISK they can make trading or how much ore they can refine or how many capital ships they can build and sell. But all these ways of "winning" have one thing in common. They are personal measures of success. Corporation and alliance killboards are not. It is wrong headed to think of them as such.

Those types of killboards are not even part of the official game. There is no mechanism in Eve Online for viewing an aggregate corporation or alliance kill mail. Killboards have come into Eve Online from other games - I would say first person shooters where that sort of thing seems to get people off. But Eve Online isn't a first person shooter. It's a sandbox. People are free to play anyway they want. Denigrating them for playing it their way is stupid. If you don't think so, take your first person shooter attitude and go play Dust 514 or something. Around here you're just another loud mouthed ass-wipe making us all look bad.

Yea... I have always hated the whole Kill Board Based Blame Game in EvE. I get that people want a verifiable method for tracking success and failure, in competition that's how humans are. And I honestly can't say I ever looked at it from this exact perspective, but it holds some water. And I hate getting trolled for a loss as we ALL were noobs once and who's KBs can't stand up to too close a scrutiny either, even the ones you have to look back a bit on.

Strange how in Anoikis we eagerly face and willfully (and often successfully) fight pilots who can fight us w/o reservation and with every mechanic in EvE (except cynos & Titans thank the gods) and yet in Hisec we totally fail due to silly shit like, "What? yer SAFETY was ON!!" and "Oh crap bet he had +6 armor 'plants..." and the like... =\ LOL

Funny how a game with no "end game" content, and doesn't even have an ending or a specific set of objectives for winning apparently has an "I win" option. I sure wish someone had explained this to me earlier...I feel...so...enlightened.

As far as I can tell the only way to win at Eve is if you continue to play after your free trial ends.

Thats what great about Eve, so many ways to "Win" Be the best PVPer, control a big alliance. Bling your Nightmare. Get the biggest Freighter gank. Build the most Ravens. Get 100 ME/PE on all your blue prints. Control a whole constelations market. So many things to do.

I've died in the static exactly once and I was on comms. I interuppted another op in fact with a break, break. That fight actually started in the home system with me attacking a Manticore. I had to jump back into the static when his buddies in Proteus and Falcon showed up. I died, but the alliance got two in exchange (a Proteus and the bomber.) So I'm not sure what the hell your referencing Mr. Anonymous. But if I do die in the static and am not on comms, yelling at me sure as hell won't help. And knowing me, I'd go right back to the static and lose another ship as a f!@# you too gesture. It's not like I have trouble buying new ships.

Mabrick, for all the shit you've heaped on Goonswarm, you might be interested to note the history of the alliance has largely been based on showing up the ~elite PVP~ crowd who care about this kind of thing, and suggesting a version of the game where this horseshit is absent.

If someone in GSF jumps their 10bil JF unscouted onto the VFK beacon and dies in a fire, we laugh at (and usually with) him and there's never a suggestion of removing him from the alliance, or even seriously reprimanding someone. I mean, we named out main fleet doctrine after Baltec who refused to ever follow fleet doctrine and brought a mega on every fleet.

Let's get a few facts underneath that first comment shall we? I wrote a post stating The Mittani would not be around forever and would eventually fade into obscurity. That is when Goonswarm war-decked my one man corp. THEN I started heaping shit on Goonswarm. Prior to that, I had nothing whatsoever against Goonswarm or even The Mittani. I just made a (valid) point that no glory lasts forever. If that sounds like a "Goonswarm started it" too bad. Had they had thicker skins nothing would have come with it. I typically don't dwell on any one individual topic. My #1 label is "general." My #2 label is "shout out." I've written 31 posts specifically about Goonswarm that would not have been written if Goonswarm hadn't made it personal. So I take full blame for not rolling over like a good... what does Goonswarm call us... oh yeah, pubie!

As for Goonswarm PvP culture, yeah, I get that. However, that certainly doesn't apply to other CFC alliances in the least. And I know for a fact the failure to respond to CTA will get allies kicked. At least it has been threatened and whether Goonswarm is aware of it or not their name is definately used in vain to secure compliance. Maybe Goonswarm could flex some of the internal political muscle and get some of those folks to ease on off the BS. But all and all, Goonswarm is pretty good with their own. It's only us pubies that don't seem to rate - and I'm okay with that.

Goons recently required SMA to kick half its members to improve pvp stats per head. Goons are probably the most pvp stat obsessed people in the game right now with Kismeteer devising IT apps to keep track of it all.

I think that guy is free to define his "winning" in EVE as member as an "elite" group. The newbie has the right to quit this group. You have the right to beat this "elite" group into failcascade, like it was done to -A-, the elite of the elite.

Now that's something new, considering you only care about making isk and call everyone else a moron if one defines "winning" by something else that isk griding. You are pretty much the same type of guy as the one whining over a killboard. People still remember how you boast padding killboard with hi-sec miner ganks thus claiming to be the best pvper in the game. This makes both of you fail at Eve.

Slight clarification, Rixx wasn't removed for "making us look bad" (I presume via his killboard losses?). He was removed for causing drama after being asked not to as I don't want to waste my time dealing with it.

As for the rest, I agree. Seems to be quite a lot of focus on killboards - we've had people apply who actually state their efficiency, as well as their Y K:D ratio (who really cares?).

I was called to task for unproven and unsupported choices in ammo, against the specific and unflinching opinion of one person who refused to listen to a valid and reasoned argument. I have published the logs. I refused to be given a "last chance" which you chose to label as "drama" since I didn't just quietly shut up and take it. So I moved across the street and started my own corp where we are open, don't give a damn about killboards and have a blast shooting ships in the face.

I tell my alliance that I'd rather see green than red, and that I'd rather see red than nothing. If you're not losing ships then you are either not trying hard enough or just not playing. Neither is good.

That said, sometimes there are loses which make you want to comment and ask why the hell someone was flying a ship worth so much without support? At those points I go back and read my own comment about green vs. red vs. nothing.

Good article. The fun part of Eve is that you can play the way you want to play. Of course you have to bear in mind that you share the game space with a bunch of other people who are also playing the game the way they like. If I was that newbro I would just be grateful that I found out the group wasn't a good fit for me early on before I had wasted too much time with them.

1) Following company/alliance rules: a member of a corp/alliance is expected to follow the rules. If you don't you can't be trusted. Break the rules often (or badly) enough, and you get the boot because you become a liability. It's not because you're a bad person, but because you can't be trusted to do what you're suppose to do.

Note: this is not a moral judgement of whether or not certain rules are 'right' or 'wrong' only, from a leadership perspective, rules exist to be obeyed and if you don't obey them, you should get punished.

2) Not being a victim: a lot of corps out there do not allow their members to engage in spurious PvP because it puts you on people's radar. You do something stupid and die, your opponent tells their friends, who tell their friends, and next thing you know your camped 23/7 by people looking for easy kills.

Unfortunately, the leader in NewBro's alliance reacted precisely the wrong way and instead of dealing with the source, he focused on the symptoms. The problem wasn't the killboard, it was the attitudes and actions that caused the 200m ship to show up on the killboard.

Ignoring the technical mistakes, NewBro suffers from a classic case of 'I want to do it my way.' News flash, if you want to do it your way, fine, but if your way conflicts with how the corp/alliance does business, then don't be surprised when you get the boot, whether you feel it's fair or not.

I'd like to comment on your second point as this was very much a concern in Li3, my former alliance to the point where people wanted to kick people who lost expensive ships.

The problem with it as a policy is that it makes the game less fun. Everyone makes mistakes and if you dump all over people when they do they stop wanting to play. Maybe they get lucky and move elsewhere in Eve but often they simply stop logging in. That's why -A- lost, once it was clear they were outnumbered and against reasonably competent people no one wanted to risk an expensive ship loss and get blamed. Ultimately if you fail to provide fun, you lose the people following you. All of the successful null sec entities - goons, pl test are tremendous fun for the people in them.

So, apparently the drama that gets started and is the actual reason of said player getting kicked means nothing. Only the crying on reddit where the kicked player isn't going to say "I started shit and got kicked" he'll make himself look like the victim instead, thus he'll spin what happened to his own personal ways.

Also, you trying to state that it's "all about the killboard" that got him kicked, proves you're no better than copy pasting from reddit and don't actually want to give accurate information. So the more you spurt crap like this without actually deciding to not repost from reddit proves you have no idea what you're talking about, and you're more biased than the person that was kicked from said alliance.

If you reject / delete this comment proves that you're also capable of getting butthurt really quickly and have no right to be a "blogger" if you can't take the criticism.

That's my two cents, but in the end of it, if you're going to blog, don't report reddit as it makes you look like a larger dumbass than what actually are.